Guillermo del Toro: 'Working with the Weinstein brothers was horrible'

12 October 2017

Newsdesk

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(Cover) - EN Movies - Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro almost turned his back on Hollywood after working with Weinstein brothers Harvey and Bob.

The director worked with the siblings on 1997's sci-fi horror film Mimic, and admits it was a "horrible" experience.

"I really hated the experience," he said during a talk at the London Film Festival. "My first American experience was almost my last because it was with the Weinsteins and (production company) Miramax. I have got to tell you, two horrible things happened in the late nineties, my father was kidnapped and I worked with the Weinsteins.

"I know which one was worse... the kidnapping made more sense; I knew what they wanted."

Del Toro reveals he lost casting battles and story battles, but he'll forever be proud of the way he fought for his film, insisting Mimic is "visually 100 per cent exactly what I wanted", adding, "The movie is visually gorgeous and it has a couple of sequences I'm very proud of."

"On one of our first meetings they said, 'The only rule you’ve got to follow is you cannot harm kids or pets'. So I had one scene where I killed two kids and one dog... I don’t know if this is much of an achievement but it felt like one."

Del Toro's Mimic leading lady, Mira Sorvino, is among the women who have spoken out in recent days about her experiences with Harvey Weinstein, who is currently at the centre of a sex scandal following accusations of inappropriate behaviour, rape and sexual harassment.

Sorvino, who won an Oscar for her work in Weinstein's Mighty Aphrodite, claims the movie boss regularly "harassed her" for a sexual relationship, even showing up at her apartment in the mid-1990s.

"He started massaging my shoulders, which made me very uncomfortable, and then tried to get more physical, sort of chasing me around," she claims.